KYIV – Russia launched nearly two dozen attack drones towards western Ukraine overnight and damaged energy facilities near the border and in the centre of the war-battered country, officials said Wednesday.
The latest bombardment of energy infrastructure comes after officials announced rolling blackouts throughout the day to limit pressure on the grid in the wake of devastating Russian attacks on Ukrainian power plants.
“At night, the enemy attacked an energy facility in a central region. Some equipment was damaged,” the energy ministry said, adding that police and emergency services had been called to the scene.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this month that Russian drone and missile attacks had cut Ukraine’s electricity generation capacity by half compared to one year ago.
He has called on allies to send more air defense systems to Ukraine to fend off systematic attacks on critical infrastructure.
The Kremlin says its forces do not target civilians or civilian infrastructure but the Russian military has said it carries out retaliatory attacks on energy facilities.
In the western region of Lviv, which has been spared the worst of fighting of the war now in its third year, the energy ministry said “overhead lines and electrical equipment were damaged” in the barrage.
The governor of the western region that borders EU and NATO member Poland said the attacks overnight wounded two civilians, a 47-year-old and a 70-year-old.
The air force said air defense systems had downed 19 Iranian-designed attack drones overnight out of a total of 21 deployed by Russia.
Energy officials warned this week that scheduled and emergency outages were likely to increase in coming weeks. Officials say repair work on the damaged plants could take years and will cost millions of dollars.
